Rumor: iPhone 5 to feature 8MP camera from Sony

During a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer may have inadvertently slipped that Sony plans to supply Apple with 8 megapixel cameras for the iPhone 5. While discussing the Japanese earthquake and resulting tsunami, Stringer noted that Sony's camera sensor plant in Sendai had been affected and that shipments of 8MP camera sensors to Apple were subsequently delayed. Here's the excerpt in question:

8mp PINHOLE camera? What a joke. Yeah, it takes so so to average photos, but without a REAL lens, anything over 3-4 megapixels is just wasting space.
I see the cellphone makers are trying the same thing that the compact camera makers were doing until they finally ran out of megapixels. Keep throwing more and more pixels in the camera, screw the S/N ratio & noise, people will buy it because it has more "stuff" than the other guy.
I've seen really good 5mp photos & photos from cameras with 10-12mp and the 5's usually look better. If you want a camera, get a camera, but using a cell phone as a camera is a waste.
It's a swiss army knife. It can do 1000 tasks, but not to many of them perfectly.
Sorry...I've been into photography for 30+ years, and the megapixel wars the manufacturers throw around bug the h*ll out of me

In addition to that Guest, I've never factored in camera specs while making a decision when it comes to buying cell-phones. So even if they put in zillion pixel camera in any new phone it simply doesn't matter because it can never produce even half as good pictures as a real camera would.

Archean said:
In addition to that Guest, I've never factored in camera specs while making a decision when it comes to buying cell-phones. So even if they put in zillion pixel camera in any new phone it simply doesn't matter because it can never produce even half as good pictures as a real camera would.

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Yep. A nice camera is a bonus, if all other features are what I want.

But then a friend of mine likes taking photos and hates carrying around a phone and camera, so he actually buys the phone with the best camera.

gwailo247 said:
But then a friend of mine likes taking photos and hates carrying around a phone and camera, so he actually buys the phone with the best camera.

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How funny, I know a guy who absolutely hates modern cellphones, and has been into photography since '75. He prefers to carry around a 2.2MP "hip-shot" sized camera - because such a camera can snap a photograph in the midst of ongoing action. With (his) expertise, the 2MP images from his camera (at least according to my experience) looks WAY better than the newbie-looking 5MP images from my cellphone!